Ms Parrot: Essay Chef
View the video, then try the essay exercises to check your knowledge! Watch the whole story, or see parts of the story below. All of the videos have captions that one may look at YouTube.
Download the transcript of this video or download the exercises in pdf format or as a Word document.
To see the video from the site that is chinese please click the link.
To see the in-patient chapters of this video that is above you may either click on the ‘PLAYLIST’ menu item in the above YouTube video and select the chapter after that, or, you can easily click one of the pictures below and view the average person video on YouTube.
Essays help you find more info on a topic and write a analysis that is reasoned of issues in question, using a selection of external sources to support your position.
An essay is a highly structured written piece with follow a typical pattern:
Writing a essay that is good be when compared with baking a cake—if you do not mix the best ingredients when you look at the right quantities or order, and don’t stick to the required processes, then your final result will never be everything you wished for!
There is no set model for an essay, but the English for Uni website presents one popular method to do it. The following example is based around a 1000 word discussion essay. To see about essays in more detail, download this pdf or word document.
It’s important for you to analyse your topic and title very carefully in order to understand the aim that is specific of question. To achieve this, you’ll want to break the question down. Most essay questions will contain these three elements:
Content/Topic words provide the subject associated with essay.
Limiting/Focus words provide a narrower scope when it comes to essay.
Directive or Instructional words tell you how to approach the essay.
Have a look at these sample essay titles from A) Economics and B) Nutrition:
In example B, answering the question fully involves looking closely during the word that is directive and analysing its exact meaning.
Discuss: Present various points and consider the sides that are different. A discussion is usually longer than a description, as you need to provide evidence and state which argument is much more persuasive.
So, in your essay entitled:
“Chocolate is a healthy food”. Discuss.”
you would want to:
• consider a wide range of points pertaining to the title
• balance your points between supporting and opposing positions consider that is of this positions is considered the most persuasive and explain why
In addition, you need certainly to consider the amount of your essay. In a 2000 word essay it is possible to cover more points compared to a 1000 word one! This example is dependent on a 1000 word essay.
In relation to Content words your focus is obvious: chocolate!
In terms of Limiting words, you’ll want to consider what food that is healthy means. a great way to|way that is good expand your vocabulary is always to look at the Academic Word List (manufactured by Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand). The uefap website also has very useful lists of words found in particular subjects, such as mathematics, business and health science.
Directive or Instructional words
There are a number of directive words, or instructional words as they are sometimes called, which let you know how to handle it in your essay. Some common words that are directive:
| Analyse | Glance at something in depth, examining the main points. |
|---|---|
| Argue | Give known reasons for why you agree or disagree with something and show that you understand different points of view. |
| Assess | Compare different points and see in the event that argument or info is true or persuasive. |
| Compare | Show the similarities between two sets of information or arguments. ‘Compare’ often appears with ‘contrast’ in essay questions. |
| Contrast | Show the differences between two sets of data or arguments. ‘Contrast’ often appears with ‘compare’ in essay questions. |
| Criticise | Evaluate an argument or a text to see in case it is good. ‘Criticise’ does not always mean you need to be negative. |
| Critique | Evaluate an argument or a text to see when it is good. ‘Critique’ does not mean you should be negative. |
| Define | Explain the meaning of a word or a term, especially in the context of the essay. You should use a dictionary definition you are studying if it’s helpful, but remember that the word might be used in a particular way in the subject. |
| Describe | Give facts about something. |
| Discuss | go through the different sides of an argument and say which can be more convincing. Help your reader to understand more about something by giving relevant details. |
| Evaluate | glance at the strengths and weaknesses of the material and present your opinion that is final of. |
| Examine | consider the strengths and weaknesses for the material and provide your final opinion of it. |
| Explain | Help your reader to understand more about something by giving relevant details. |
| Illustrate | Give examples in order to make something clearer. |
| Interpret | Help your reader to comprehend more about something and supply your own perspective if necessary. |
| Justify | Give reasons to explain what you think about a subject. |
| Outline | Give a explanation that is broad of without a lot of details. |
| Prove | Show if something holds true and demonstrate the way you reached that conclusion. |
| Review | Have a look at something at length and provide your perspective onto it. |
| State | Put your ideas or arguments clearly. |
| Summarise | Pull everything together and present it clearly without needing way too much detail. |
Brainstorming means producing ideas related to a layout. You can easily write the basic ideas down in every order.
The following is a possible brainstorm for the chocolate essay, carried out in the type of a mind map:
Keep in mind that the focus that is centralthe essay question) has several boxes connected to it which represent the writer’s first ideas. Other boxes area then added. A brainstorm such as this is organic; it does not necessarily stop growing. You could add, remove or reorganise it while you wish. If you want to place more system into the brainstorm, use a model that is step-based as the immediate following:
Step one
Time yourself for the first draft of the mind map
Set a set time for this drafting from your own base topic/question and stick to it.
Step 2
Look critically at your draft
Which ideas can you develop or remove? Is there a balance of ideas?
Step 3
Think about ordering
Which issues might you tackle first in your essay and just why?
Step 4 readers that are anticipate needs
Are there any any words and/or phrases which may need explaining? In that case, when could be the time that is best into the essay for this?
Step 5
Move
Reflect upon your brainstorming. Once you are pleased with your brainstorm it can be used by you to plan your essay.
Once some brainstorming has been done by you, it’s time to get researching!
Keep in mind that an academic essay requires academic sources.
Finding what you want takes time and effort. The place that is best to begin (if you haven’t been already given a prescribed reading list!) is to apply an academic database. If you should be not sure just essay helper how to use a database, then book a scheduled appointment with your subject librarian at your institution.
An alternative choice is to use an internet academic internet search engine such as for instance Google Scholar. N.B. Make certain you are logged in the library at your educational institution, to enable you to make use of the full database capacities linked to Google Scholar.
You need to enter keywords to begin with. When it comes to chocolate essay, one of the primary associations we thought of was chocolate and mood. If we enter these words into Google Scholar it will seem like this:
This may take you to definitely a webpage which lists a number of relevant articles, like this:
The first two articles have now been cited 90 times and 103 times respectively, suggesting which they might be sources that are good your essay. The links to your right indicate that you can access the articles through your university website.
If you think a write-up looks promising, click the link and appear in the abstract:
Read the abstract and inquire yourself in the event that content associated with article will probably be highly relevant to your essay.
a) If yes, click on the pdf. This will take you to the article that is full you can then skim read quickly to choose if it’s relevant.
b) If no, then chances are you have a selection. Either click the links to other related articles or return to Google Scholar and choose another article then to skim read.
If you don’t find what you are actually trying to find, then you need to improve your keywords search.
You think might be useful, make a note in your plan at the appropriate place when you have found what.
Do the thing that is same all of the points that need academic references to support them.
Keep in mind that throughout your research you could discover new issues and perspectives you hadn’t considered before, so that your original plan might be quite not the same as the one that is final!
Once you’ve brainstormed your ideas and done some initial research, start putting them into a logical order as part of the essay planning process. Brainstorming allows you to see just what you realize concerning the topic. Researching provides you with more depth. Brainstorming, planning and researching are cyclical, which means each process helps one other processes and you also might choose to do each process more than once.